


This Is The Thing

by GraphiteFox



Series: Say When [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Roxlin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4173315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraphiteFox/pseuds/GraphiteFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling in love, she thinks, is an uncertainty she can handle, as long as it’s him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is The Thing

               Roxy doesn’t think of it as falling in love. To her, Merlin is simply someone she can be vulnerable with. When she thinks of the people she’s allowed into her life and how she can count them on one hand, she begins to realize that there’s no such thing as “simply” being vulnerable.

               Then she decides to think of it as feeling comfortable with someone; which, if she _really_ thinks about it, is exactly the same thing as falling in love.

 

 i.

                 She loves that he doesn’t underestimate her.

                 In training, he matched her up with the tallest recruit. At first she thought he was mocking her: all the others certainly did. Even Eggsy looked concerned. It kicked up a fire in her blood.

                She laid the recruit flat on his back like a sacrifice and when the others gasped, she looked only to Merlin for a reaction.

                That was when she saw the pride in his gaze, the slight smirk that faded away in seconds.

                Not a taunt but an acknowledgement.

                She has a better sparring partner these days and it doesn’t bother her so much when she loses, because she always gets a kiss.

 ii.

 

                He’s a workaholic, and while she _doesn’t_ love that, she loves watching him work.

                He fidgets. The brush of his fingers across his mouth, the shifting of a pen from his right side to his left (he’s ambidextrous, which she learned the hard way during one of their knife combat training sessions). Sometimes his leg will jog up and down, only for a few seconds.

                In the heat of a mission, his movements are all smooth and precise. It’s only when he’s at ease that his subconscious kicks in, finding ways to expend all that coiled energy.

                She likes to interrupt him with a kiss on the top of his head, taking care to thumb away any lipstick impression. (He’s so tall that she doubts anyone would see it anyway, unless he was seated.) Their discussions are always the same: “Dinner?” “Let me finish this.” “You’ve got ten minutes.” “I’ll only need five.” “Liar.”

                He used to fall asleep at his desk. Now he falls asleep beside her.

 iii.

 

                They trade notes frequently: scraps of paper or Post-Its with little affections written in his clean, sprawling script or her sparse, blocky print. They are constantly connected via the glasses—it would take only a second to access the coms. The notes, comparatively, require effort. There’s more meaning in a _“how are you?_ ” slipped between pages of a mission report or _“I’ve got dinner tonight_ ” left in her range stall.

                Sometimes there are no words, just a rough sketch of a cup of tea or a pillow, which means “I’m thinking of you.”

                That’s a sentiment that doesn’t require words.

 iv.

 

                She loves that he’s a romantic. Not the dozen red roses type—that kind of display is creatively barren and she could never abide it. No, Merlin is a fan of gestures. A quiet, “all right then, Lancelot?” when she’s returning from a mission; a glass of wine in the bath; lazy fingers in her hair on a grey Sunday morning.

                Thanks to Merlin she’s learned that just because she can do something herself doesn’t mean she always has to. Relinquishing control over who makes the toast is not a life or death situation, though she admits that sometimes even that small concession feels like too much.

                Still, Merlin is more than capable. He only needed to watch her once to know that she likes to have butter spread all the way to the edge of the bread so that every crumb is delicious. It took her a lot longer to figure out his marmalade hierarchy (it goes orange, lime, lemon, quince, and no one is allowed to even suggest grapefruit again).

                Neither of them like the idea of breakfast in bed (awkward, crumbs), so sometimes they spend quiet mornings off sitting on either side of the small bay window in Roxy’s flat, reading a book and drinking tea. Hours can pass with the scratch of a page turning as the only sound.

                That they can be completely at peace with each other without speaking or touching: this is the thing that hits her the hardest.

v.               

                Of course the touching is nice, too. More than nice.

                Merlin’s just as good at following instructions as he is at giving them. When she cries out “ _more, harder_ ,” he gives her just that. She’ll admit to daydreaming during particularly boring meetings of how it feels to have his lips on her neck, the hint of teeth to tease her skin; or when his fingers curl inside of her and her back arches in a way that makes her _swear_ she’d have been an excellent contortionist in another life.

                She loves the moments just after they come, when they’re both damp and breathless and a little bit disoriented still. She maps out the lines of the tattoos that span his back with fingers sore from gripping (sheets, skin, the headboard), lost in the sensation of touch, until their breathing slows and they fall asleep. In truth, the moments when she’s skirting her fingertips over his inked skin feel far more intimate than sex.

 

  vi.             

                One night she orders him to “fuck me like you love me.”

                He strokes her jawline with his thumb, a strange smile on his face. “That’s not fucking,” he tells her.

                _Is it not?_ she thinks. He kisses her forehead, her eyelids, her lips, and she begins to understand.

                She can call it feeling comfortable, she can call it being vulnerable--it all means the same thing. It means that she feels sparks when he touches her; that she’d rather experience that little discomfort when he does something differently than do it herself; that she recognizes that the time spent learning to sketch a teacup on an old report was not wasted, but was in fact being put to the best possible use.

                When they make love, she feels quiet and still and content.

               

                Falling in love, she thinks, is an uncertainty she can handle, as long as it’s him.

**Author's Note:**

> Roxy, to me, has a hard time analyzing why she feels the way she does about certain things. I see her as a person who’s had to wall herself off and stay in control constantly, and while Merlin allows her to ease up when they’re together, it’s not as simple as becoming instantly and completely vulnerable. That takes time.
> 
> I feel like this one ended up being heavy-handed, sorry.
> 
> (I am not sorry for tattooed Merlin however because what is under those sweaters? The world may never know. Shirtless Merlin scene in Kingsman 2, do it Matthew Vaughn.)


End file.
